“Hey you! Be in my group! Now you’re in my group you can see how bad ass of a group mod I am! I even added a group chat to our little Facebook Community!”

You gotta love the vigilance of Facebook Group/Page recruiters and moderators but there’s more to love than this human species… or even internet bot species. There are the applications that are meant to enhance these communities. One for example, an application named “Group Chat” which offers a chat forum but also seems to spam the shit out of your friends list that it’s not supposed to have any access, what-so-ever, too. For example …

None of these people were in the group this app had been added to.

It sent out many notifications. These two screen shots are just two examples out of a dozen.

And it doesn’t look like Facebook did anything to discipline the app makers – as the app is still around even after a year of complaints.

German, British and Canadian Governments are monitoring Facebook’s assault of the general definition of privacy. Meanwhile the shameless free market fundamentalists who’ve wormed themselves into the American Government, in great numbers, are giving “favors” and trading players…

The minister, Ilse Aigner, first raised concerns about Facebook two months ago, urging the network to upgrade its privacy settings.

Last week, in response to a backlash among users, Facebook announced that it was simplifying its privacy controls and applying them retroactively, so users can protect the status updates and photos they posted in the past.

Those changes were “a first step in the right direction, but I still have my doubts as to whether these improvements will really bring a true turning point,” Aigner said after meeting Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of European public policy.

Aigner said the meeting “unfortunately confirmed my skepticism.”

She said she plans to leave the network, but will remain in contact with Facebook managers and “will not rest until data protection is improved decisively.”

The changes so far aren’t enough “to protect the privacy of users and to comply with our German law, which has higher standards than elsewhere in the world and America,” Aigner added.

She complained that the network’s data protection system remains too complicated and geared toward opting out of sharing information rather than opting in.

Aigner has also harshly criticized Google Inc. for failing to respect German data protection regulations through its Street View mapping program.

Facebook announced Thursday the hire of Marne Levine, as its first-ever Vice President of Global Public Policy. She’ll start at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech company next month but will remain based in Washington, D.C. Currently, she serves as chief of staff for the White House National Economic Counsel; previously, following a background in the online payments space, she worked in the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Legislative Affairs and Public Liaison, and was chief of staff to former Treasury head Larry Summers when he was president of Harvard University.

“I’m excited that Marne is joining my team as Vice President, Global Public Policy,” a statement from Facebook vice president of communications Elliot Schrage read. “With over 70 percent of our users living outside the United States, her unique mix of government and Internet industry experience will be invaluable to help Facebook address some of the most interesting questions at the intersection of technology and public policy.”

As Facebook draws ever closer to the half-billion-member milestone, the company increasingly finds itself dealing with international governments and legislative bodies both inside and outside of the U.S. Part of Levine’s job will be to help build public policy teams in Asia, Europe, and the Americas; Facebook’s existing D.C. branch head, Tim Sparapani, will continue to manage the company’s relationship with the U.S. government.

Part of Levine’s background–connections to Harvard University, the Treasury Department, and Larry Summers–sounds a whole lot like that of another Facebook executive, chief operating officer and former Google sales exec Sheryl Sandberg, who was Summers’ chief of staff when he was at the Treasury Department. Sandberg was one of Facebook’s first prominent employees to come from a government background rather than Silicon Valley.

Facebook’s existing D.C. connections also run deep thanks to Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company, who serves on Facebook’s board of directors. The Washington Post was also the outlet for an op-ed penned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the company’s most recent privacy controversy, indicating Facebook’s desire to further permeate the close-knit world of D.C. influence and dealmaking.

Who doesn’t get friend requests from weirdos? I know I do. I tend to ignore them when Facebook respects my wish enough to give me that right to ignore them. There’ve been a few times though that Facebook has been like, “Oh you can’t ignore them. Sorry but no.”

Honestly. The thing with the Pedro… Pablo… whatever – dude is, I think the request got hung up in a server process. Somehow the server, instead of quantifying my input to ignore and block this person, just forgot wtf it was supposed to do and shuffled ol’ Pablo whatever off into the la-la land of the “Hanging Process.”

Oh yes btw – we’re labeling Facebook as Facistbook these days based on the definition OF fascism:1. Fascism tends to include a belief in supremacy of one national OR ethnic group = Mark’s opinion of himself and his company.2. Fascism holds a contempt for democracy = Facebook’s ever-changing policies which effect millions of people without their ability to vote or have a say in what happens to them.3. Fascism demands an obedience to a powerful leader = All powerful Facebook forces you to register your computer to sign in, forces you to link your profile to sales pitches, forces you to download their wares to upload your photos, forces you with no opt-outs… there’s a lot of coercion to obedience going on, on Facebook [Fascistbook] these days.4. Fascism holds a strong demagogic approach… = A [political leader] AKA [a large corporation] who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational logic… (WE could write a whole dissertation just on this last definition.)

Please take a moment to register this computer by choosing a name you’ll remember later. You’ll receive a notification confirming that you registered and logged in from here. Please note that if you clear your cookies you may need to reregister this computer.”

The “yesterday” date mark is May 4th, 2010 and there are no other topics regarding this new(?) demand before this date anywhere online of what we could find, in any forum. This new “security measure” seems pretty damn recent.
Don’t believe it? Well it happened to us today!
Before “registering” anything we’ve given Facebook the opportunity to answer for themselves. We sent them an email, “Why are we having to register a computer we’ve used for the last five years to log in to Facebook today?” What do you want to bet two outcomes – 1. no reply or 2. a form reply claiming “security” due to phishing and malware…

We’ve also taken the liberty to write Senators Schumer, Franken, Bennet, Begich, and our own State’s Attorney Generals as well on this and one thing is for sure – we aren’t registering SHIT until we get a response from someone. (see edit)

You know, there are other ways of dealing with “hacked accounts” instead of gathering even more information than usual, on every computer that connects to Facebook. It’s not like they don’t log our IP’s.

The splash page has made it clear though, if you want to get onto their network to see your information, you have no choice but to give them even more information about your home location than has ever been needed in the past. (And quite frankly, should not be needed now.) There really is no excuse for this but let’s see them try to make up a good one.

EDIT: Of course we got the form letters today from Bennet and FBook but we also read the link above’s new development – which indicates that the logging of your computer’s ID issue is due to yet another new setting in the overly confusing plethora of new, rearranged, and reworded Facebook settings. Remember the slider settings? Those were good times. Anyway, this new setting could have been automatically changed for you, or you could have changed it not knowing what it does because it’s not very clear in an explanation on what it does and how it works.

In fact this is what the setting says word for word:

“To help keep your Facebook account as safe as possible, we can notify you when your account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that you haven’t used before.

Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?”

Sounds harmless enough to check “Yes” for but it really isn’t because it’s not 100% truthful about what it does.

Ultimately, there’s nothing in that explanation about “Team Zuckerberg” locking your ass out of your account till Facebook registers your computer. You know, the computer you’ve been consistently using to log into FB for the last five years. Even though the setting says “…computers or mobile device that you haven’t used before.”

So if you’re thinking about using their “security settings,” you’d better think again because THIS is what happens.

Anyway, if you’re locked out then that’s it. You are locked the fuck out till you name your computer in their records. After getting the form letters we registered our computers – this was my registration result:

UP NEXT… On the topic of new demands and forcing you to do shit you don’t want to do: Facebook has been on the offensive about prominently linking your likes and interests, to your account. You can be dicking around, emailing team members, managing a group and the next thing you know you’re being told, not asked, to link to some malarkey:

What WE do in this situation is just hit the “refresh” button and it goes away. That’s our “No” button. Refresh = no. It works at the moment. But if you think that’s all you’ll see of that sheisty message… believe us – you’ll be seeing it often.

Facebook is being relentless about wrangling its little bundles of commodities [YOU] into well behaving rows of information to present to the Wall Street Journal, Sephora, Scribd, and other ass-tastic corporations on their buddy list.

Just keep hitting refresh on this and happy Facebooking you little well-behaved little bundles of commoditized information.